From quite a different tradition, Michel Foucault, one of the founders of modern postmodernism, developed this perspective at length. All claims to explanation or understanding always entail what he calls totalization, and totalization is invariably manipulative and destructive. Foucault was shrewd enough to recognize that if his explanation is true, it is true even of his own explanation. There is, of course, also rising secularization. That needs to be understood. This does not necessarily mean there are fewer people who go around calling themselves Christians. It just means it doesn’t matter. Secularization, as understood by sociologists, is not the process by which we abandon religion; it’s the process by which we squeeze religion to the periphery of life. John, Gray (2015). Enlightenment's Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-17022-3. OCLC 941437450. a b c d van Doorn, Marjoka (2014). "The nature of tolerance and the social circumstances in which it emerges". Current Sociology. 62 (6): 905–927. We administered two surveys, first in a single country (Sweden) and then cross-nationally in five countries (Australia, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Results from confirmatory factor analysis demonstrate that the three-factor model has good fit. Based on results from multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we conclude that respondents across countries understand tolerance similarly. This means that these items can be used to examine tolerance, including its determinants or consequences, both within and across countries. Further, we demonstrated convergent validity by examining the relationship among tolerance and various measures of prejudice. We also found discriminant validity in relation to welfare attitudes. Relationships among types of tolerance and demographic variables lend credence to our claim that, although tolerance is correlated with prejudice, it is a distinct phenomenon that can, and should, be operationalized as such.

In America, the drive came much more through the social sciences: cultural anthropology, sociology, psychology, and so forth. I’ve long told students in this country the most dangerous departments for their faith in current Western universities are not science departments. Science departments have far, far more Christians in them than the arts departments. Ronald Dworkin argues that in exchange for toleration, minorities must bear with the criticisms and insults which are part of the freedom of speech in an otherwise tolerant society. [27] Dworkin has also questioned whether the United States is a "tolerant secular" nation, or is re-characterizing itself as a "tolerant religious" nation, based on the increasing re-introduction of religious themes into conservative politics. Dworkin concludes that "the tolerant secular model is preferable, although he invited people to use the concept of personal responsibility to argue in favor of the tolerant religious model." [28]

The expression plausibility structure was coined by sociologist Peter Berger in his book, The Heretical Imperative. He uses it to refer to structures of thought widely and almost unquestioningly accepted throughout the culture. One of his arguments is that in tight monolithic cultures, like Japan, the reigning plausibility structures may be enormously complex because so many people share so many things in common. As a result, there may be many stances that are widely assumed, more or less unquestioned. A. There is objective truth out there, and it is our duty to pursue that truth. B. The various parties in a dispute think they know what the truth of the matter is. C. Nevertheless, they hold that the best chance of uncovering the truth of the matter is by the unhindered exchange of ideas no matter how wrongheaded some of those ideas seem to other parties. You can’t say that sort of thing because it’s outside the camp. You can say it in your narrow-minded, right-wing, bigoted, fundamentalist schools, but apart from that you’re not allowed to say that sort of thing, because it’s just too ignorant by half. All of this depends on a certain notion of the progress of revelation. Just how people greet each other. Then when they get down to arguing.… I was always in the chair. I would start trying to get responses. I remember turning to one dear brother from Japan one day and saying, “Brother, I haven’t heard your judgment on this matter. What do you think?” In his 1882 essay " What is a Nation?", French historian and philosopher Ernest Renan proposed a definition of nationhood based on "a spiritual principle" involving shared memories rather than a common religious, racial, or linguistic heritage. Thus members of any religious group could participate fully in the nation's life. "You can be French, English, German, yet Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or practicing no religion." [14] In the twentieth century [ edit ]

With time, of course, that discipline may revise the methods or reanalyze the foundations. It’s not as if everything is set in concrete. Nevertheless, methodologically, epistemologically, that’s how Western thought has developed. That’s how science has, in large part, developed. There are lots of little kinks that are put in. Walsham, Alexandra (12 October 2017). "Toleration, Pluralism, and Coexistence: The Ambivalent Legacies of the Reformation". Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History. 108 (1): 181–190. doi: 10.14315/arg-2017-0121. ISSN 2198-0489. S2CID 148602448.Moreover, there were three or four movements in Western culture that came together and contributed to this shift. People have been thinking about these things for a long time. Immanuel Kant was no postmodernist, but on the other hand, he made the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. [15] Today’s political correctness, however, is intolerant not of substance, but of intolerance itself. Thus, although the politically correct would have a great deal of difficulty agreeing on what constitutes goodness and truth, they have no trouble at all agreeing that intolerance itself is wrong. Why? Because no one deserves to be offended.” I want to use most of the rest of my time in this first session to talk about … 2. The sea change that helped bring about this new tolerance. My point is both Mill and Lessing think there is objective truth out there. After all, there is at least one magic ring, but their rationalist and secular presuppositions drive them to infer in some domains, at least, the truth is not accessible. One can think something or other is true and argue the case, but if one cannot prove this something is true in a manner that conforms to the verification standards of public knowledge, the best stance is simply benign tolerance. Hanson, Charles P. (1998). Necessary Virtue: The Pragmatic Origins of Religious Liberty in New England. University Press of Virginia. ISBN 978-0-8139-1794-8.

There are also some correlatives to this postmodernism. Let me list a few. By correlatives, I mean things that have neither caused it nor been caused by it but both. That is, they have contributed to the development of postmodernism, and they are strengthened by post-modernism, but it’s not a one-to-one relationship. It’s messy. We’ll call them the correlatives of postmodernism. Let me mention three or four. What I said to him was, “Look, there are some things to work through, but your first step of homework, which I hereby cheerfully assign, is to go home and look up every single passage in the Bible, write it out, where it says ‘that you may know [a proposition].’ Not so we know God, but know a proposition. Doubtless, there are many things that have contributed to this new view of tolerance. To be included in any full-blown discussion would be such phenomena as the changing immigration patterns during the past half century, which have brought to our shores millions of men and women who have contributed to the rich diversity of our citizenry; the invention of the computer and the Internet, which exposes us to all kinds of ideas and stances and perspectives much more rapidly than could have possibly been done a bare generation ago; the invention of the Net itself, not just the computer, which links people together. They enhance the feeling that the world is nothing but a global village, and much more. I was giving the Staley Lectures in a conservative Christian college, which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, not too long ago. One of the students came to me after some long discussions on some of these matters and said, “I see the Bible does say things like ‘these are written that you may know, dear old Theophilus, the certainty of the things …’ I see the Bible says that, but I’ve got to tell you, everytime I read that stuff I get really embarrassed. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel uncomfortable.” For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my judgment and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.John Gray states that "When we tolerate a practice, a belief or a character trait, we let something be that we judge to be undesirable, false, or at least inferior; our toleration expresses the conviction that, despite its badness, the object of toleration should be left alone." [22] However, according to Gray, "new liberalism – the As Gaede puts it in his very useful book, When Tolerance is No Virtue, he writes, “In the past political correctness generally centered on issues that were quite substantive. The Victorians were prudish about sex because they were enthusiastic about bourgeois morality. In the fifties, many Americans were intolerant of any notion that seemed remotely “pink” (socialistic) because they assumed communism to be a major threat to their economic and political freedom.

To “put up with” in political terms translates into allowing the expression of objectionable ideas (Sullivan et al. 1979), or more specifically, to extend social rights related to political participation and freedom of speech to groups one dislikes or disagrees with (Mondak and Sanders 2005; Rapp 2017). The “objection criteria” is at the core of this conceptualization, as “… one cannot tolerate ideas of which one approves (Gibson 2006, p. 22).” Tolerance, in this sense, is a sequential or twofold concept (Rapp and Freitag 2015), where the crux of the matter is the initial position of like or dislike. Bowen, John (February–March 2004). "Muslims and Citizens". The Boston Review . Retrieved 25 January 2011. For Mill, people should be tolerant in the domain of religion not because this is the best way to uncover the truth, but precisely because whatever the truth there are insufficient means for uncovering it. In some universities, the most challenging department is the English department, followed pretty closely by cultural anthropology, and after that three or four notches down by sociology and so on. That’s the way it is. Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go after them, I’m just saying objectively that’s the way it is.

Three Faces of Tolerance

Toleration has been described as undermining itself via moral relativism: "either the claim self-referentially undermines itself or it provides us with no compelling reason to believe it. If we are skeptical about knowledge, then we have no way of knowing that toleration is good." [24] We advance a new conception of the phenomenon in question and define tolerance as a value orientation towards difference. The fundamental question is not whether one puts up with something disliked but how one responds to the existence of diversity itself. This definition is abstract and analytically distinct from other concepts. Footnote 4 Our focus is on subjective reactions to difference; thus, this conceptualization does not require dislike of or identification of potentially objectionable groups, ideas, or behaviors. In practice, this definition is consistent with the approach to tolerance that does incorporate forbearance into its definition. Laursen, John Christian; Nederman, Cary, eds. (1997). Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-3331-5.